Today We’ve listened a great Steve Portigal’s webcast from O’Reilly. To be honest, Steve is the best as usual. Krzysztof had the opportunity to attend his workshop at UX-lx 2012. He remembers one great lesson from Steve: go outside the building and talk with real people, with real customers.
And today Steve gave an awesome package of stories from life and research field. In a couple of days there should be a video of this webcast available on O’Reilly’s page, so be sure to come back here in a few days to grab it.

For now you can find some resources, that Steve have shared with attendees of the webcast. So take a look, read and be better at user interviews! You can find some useful links links below.

Interview With Steve Portigal, Author Of The Book ‘Interviewing Users’

Steve Portigal is a principal at Portigal Consulting and an author of the book Interviewing Users (Rosenfeld Media, 2013). Steve and I talked about why it is so hard for people to do user research and how startups should approach it.

What do customers want or need ? A permanent concern for entrepreneurs, designers, marketers and others seeking to innovate. Steve discusses methods for exploring both solutions and needs and he explores how an understanding of culture (yours and your customers’) can drive innovation.

Culture is everywhere we look, and (perhaps more importantly) everywhere we don’t look. It informs our work, our purchases, our usage, our expectations, our comfort, and our communications. In this presentation, Steve will discuss the use of ethnographic research in the product development process and suggest how an understanding of culture is a crucial component in innovation.

Some of the most effective ways of understanding what customers want or need – going out and talking to them – are surprisingly indirect. Insights produced by these methods impact two facets of innovation: first as information that informs the development of new products and services, and second as catalysts for internal change. Steve discusses methods for exploring both solutions and needs and explores how an understanding of culture (yours and your customers) can drive design and innovation.

Editor’s Note: This post for May’s Special Edition on ‘Talking to Companies about ethnography’ comes from Steve Portigal who has a new book out this month titled Interviewing Users. As someone who’s been in the trenches for decades now running his own successful consultancy, Steve has done a great deal of both ‘interviewing users’ and ‘talking to companies about ethnography.’ Below we take the opportunity to interview him! We at Ethnography Matters are also big fans of the ‘War Stories‘ series on his blog where interviewers report on the unexpected things that happen to them in the field.

At UIE, we receive a steady flow of questions about user research. There is a staggering amount of information out in the world, just waiting to guide your designs. Best of all, it’s nearly free for the taking. We’re happy to reveal the key to unlocking this information: Ask the right questions.

Getting out into the world and actually interacting with real people who use, or potentially could use, your product or service is incredibly valuable. We tell our clients this constantly: the organizations who are most successful are the ones who are on intimate terms with how and why their customers use their product. But how? To answer that question, we invited our friend Steve Portigal, principal of Portigal Consulting, to conduct the UIE Virtual Seminar, “Deep Dive Interviewing Secrets: Making Sure You Don’t Leave Key Information Behind”

A great how-to handbook for anyone engaged in user interviews, conducted in a design context. The book is packed with ideas, guidelines, and tricks on how to surface relevant insights for new products and services. This book is a fantastic compilation of insights and methodological tricks!